'Harry Potter And The Religious Backlash' Gets A 2019 Reboot

Recently, we've seen a lot of rumors about a potential Harry Potter reboot, likely to keep the franchise fresh in the minds of younger children. That way Universal won't have to rebrand their theme park as "The Wizarding World of Paw Patrol" or whatever. While there's been no official word of a reboot, this past weekend, we got a blast of Harry Potter nostalgia in the form of a religious ban. Which, if you recall, was a big thing once.

In advance of the new school year, St. Edward Catholic School in Nashville yanked J.K. Rowling's beloved books from their library, presumably while listening to Nickelback and using flip phones, because clearly this school exists in some kind of pocket dimension where it's still the early 2000s. The school's priest, Father Dan Reehil, followed up by emailing parents from whatever rock he's been living under for the past two decades to explain his reasoning. And if you think exorcists aren't involved, well, you're sorely mistaken.

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Yup, according to his email, Father Reehil consulted "several exorcists, both in the United States and Rome," who recommended pulling the books -- not because they're more into the adventures of Percy Jackson, but because they think the books are a "clever deception" that will lead to a path of evil (when in reality, the worst thing they lead to is a crappy prequel series starring Johnny Depp).

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Weirder still, the school purports that the books contain "actual curses and spells." You know, like that real-life spell that makes a bouquet of flowers shoot out of a bit of wood you're holding, or reconfigures the interior of a tent to be slightly larger. The spells, Father Reehil claims, "risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text," which explains why so many audiobook technicians have been devoured by demons. He also claims that kids will learn about "conjuring the dead" from a series that has sold more than 500 million books to people who have apparently been too darn lazy to crack the secrets of necromancy.

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But if you're a student at St. Edward, wouldn't this only make you want to read the books more? An international team of exorcists claim that these easily accessible texts house the key to immortality! So good luck keeping those kids from scoring a copy on Amazon. Maybe banning the books again will do more for the franchise than any reboot possibly could.

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